Log in

User Name

Password

Remember Me?

Lost Password Recovery Form

If you have forgotten your username or password, you can request to have your username emailed to you and to reset your password. When you fill in your registered email address, you will be sent instructions on how to reset your password.

"For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game- none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our ability to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few- drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds."

Thanks Eponine, you just totally made my morning (or late afternoon if you reckon by the sun, instead of my ridiculous sleep schedule)

Yeah, I definitely dig the Nouveau and Jugendstil. Beardsley, EBJ, and Mucha are all gods. I also dig their precursors among the Pre-Raphaelites and other 19th century movements. Boulanger, Waterhouse, Rackham, and some of my favoritie symbolists, are hanging out in the right panel of that tryptic study; along with some faces you might recognize in the Night Mare's mane. I'm making a spot for Leighton, Alma-Tadema and some other turn of the century masters in the left panel. I love the long curves... vines, hair... all that jazz.

Its actually kind of funny that you bring up this period in (art) history. I actually stayed up all last night working on a new game map for that TripleA project. The working title is "Domination 1900" but I'm trying to come up with something with a little more impact. Its going to use a modified Axis and Allies ruleset, (simplified to play more like Risk) based on a roughly 1880-1911 set up. Most A&A games use a highly distorted world map which has always irritated me, so I tried to create a unique projection that would enlarge the European theater, while still preserving some semblence of geographical accuracy. This is the first game to use the new map projection, but I'm hoping to update 4th ed A&A as well. If you dig strategy games, and want to help design one, feel free to stop by the development page we can kick some ideas around.

Also, my mom just emailed me a prismacolor drawing she found rolled up in the garage. When I was about 15 I was going to enter it in that 'National Bird Stamp' competition they hold every few years... but then I missed the dealine, threw it in a tube, and forgot all about it. Its kind of cool looking though... I think I might have to finish it over the holidays

Sorry to hear about your rough night. I guess we all go through the "anger" drawing at some point.
Once I got so frustrated with an ink drawing I was doing on matte board that I took a knife to it and started just slicing away at the board. Oddly enough though, by the time I had finished, the new and quite bizarre shape of the piece had actually improved it! lol

I finally finished that game map I was working on... well almost finished at any rate. It uses an original projection I made which tries to strike a balance between the distrortions/abstractions of the Axis and Allies game board and real world geography. I tried to preserve some semblance of relative distance and scale, but many areas of the map are tweaked well beyond mercator to accomodate the gameplay. Main features of the A&A board are an enlarged Europe (and shinking of Africa), an englarged South Pacific/East Asia, and a dramatically reduced scale for the Americas. Other areas of the map, like central Asia and the oceans are also tweaked to accomodate these changes. My goal was to subdivide the territories as detailed as possible, so I could quickly remove the boarder lines to created games on different scales. It should cover everything from Classic A&A through the new Anniversay Edition, but right now I'm using it for my own pet project, Domination 1900.

The set up is anachronous but loosely based on the period of conflict spaning from the late 1880s to the early 1920s. Some territories may get axed, repositioned, or renamed, but it should pretty much end up looking like this. Now that the names are all in place (and my eye's are done bleeding) I can finally go to sleep.

*Edit update: 09-18-07
Now that my basic map projection is complete I'm also kicking around a bunch of other game ideas...

Colonial Era: 1600
This is an anachronous map designed to pit the major European Colonial powers against one another. The set up is intentionally loose, but basically the idea is to have the Spanish, Portuguese, Austrians and Turks in a state of slow decline, while the Dutch, English, French, and Russians are on the rise. Possible units might look something like this...
Land Units: Explorers (increased range), Colonist (defense), Soldiers (attack)
Naval Units: Exporers, Merchant Vessels (trade/resources?), Warships

Domination 1860
I have Mexico and the Confederacy as minor powers in addition to the others. I went ahead and made Charleston the capital of the South, since Richmond and Washington are too close together to work. S. Carolina was the first to toll the bell of secession though, so I think it works well enough. Major powers for this period are Britain, France and Russia. Prussia in is on the rise, and the House of Savoy has moved to unite Italy (opposed by France, Spain, and Austria). The Ottomans are in a slightly stronger position but still in a state of decline. Japan has been opened to Western Trade, begining a period of rapid modernization.

Domination: 1940-41
Pearl/Barbarossa Opening: The Pacific is calm just before the storm, while Europe is engulfed in war. Vichy France and the other Axis allies are a seperate "attackable neutral" style player. Russia and Red China will be a seperate team, only nominally aligned with the Western Powers and Nationalist China. The idea is to have the two Allied blocks (West/Communist) too weak at the outset to fight one another and still ward off the Axis, but durring the endgame they may elect to confront one another...
For those marathon games that just don't want to end.

Domination: 1942-43
Midway/Stalingrad Opening: Japan is at the height of its power in the Pacific; the other Axis allies have either been absorbed by Germany, or are now treated as regular neutrals. The Germans have captured Tobruk and are driving against Egypt, while the American expeditionary force has landed in Morocco.

Domination: Red Dawn 1950-60s
Pre-Sino Soviet Split; Korea, Cuban Missile Crisis etc. Proxy powers represent US/Soviet clients, satelites, and military dependencies. The French Commonwealth and other the other Nato Allies could either be neutral style, or playable depending on the needs of the set up.

Domination: Red Dawn 1970-80s
From Angola, to Iran Contra and Nicaragua. For both the Red Dawn Scenerios, we basically we have the 5 main members of the Security Council, plus the US/Soviet proxies... which I'm not yet sure how we should handle. I'd also like to come up with a creative way to deal with Nukes.

Domination: 2010-15
We have a lot of flexibility here, but I'd like to do something with a cool backstory. Basically this map should reflect the resource wars, and challenges to Anglo-America hegemony, which loom heavy on the "future shock" horizon.

This rough sketch took a ridiculously long time to draw (and its still nowhere near as glorious as it should be.) Anyone who doesn't respect the decorative arts should sit down and try to follow my man Alphonse... its a lot harder than you might think. After this, I'm afraid to even attempt his silverware designs.

hey Jason, I haven't been able to keep up with this thread to the extent that I would like, but i wanted to say that the dedication that you show is amazing! Plus, I really like your designs and your rendering, to me it feels like you've found a style that fits your character and that you really enjoy and I really respect that.

The only suggestion I can make is in regards to portraits....in most of these the edges seem almost uniformly hard, it would give your drawing a lot more interest if you varied the edge quality...also, some features are a little off, so doing some more construction would be beneficial too. But really great work, the Bridgman studies are looking good too!